Kevin Rolston [00:00:04]:
That's why I completely recommend finding a specialist and somebody that walks you through all this. But as far as what I am doing right now with my hair, it is natural hair. It looks absolutely amazing. It blends in. I have a hairstylist that cuts it any way that I want. I go in every three weeks and it looks completely natural. You would have no idea that I have a hair system on at all. And that's, to me, why I love it.


Kevin Rolston [00:00:47]:
Hello, my name is Kevin Rolston, and I am the host of the HairPod. And today I want to take you through my own hair loss journey. Everybody's going to have their own story and it's going to be completely different. But maybe something I say in my own hair loss journey can help you with the hair loss journey that you are going through as well. For me, I knew at a very young age that I likely was going to have to deal with hair loss. There was a portrait of my maternal grandfather that was hanging in the upstairs hallway, and I remember noticing just how much hair he was missing and having a conversation with my mom, and she may not even realize, but she flippantly just said, yeah, you know what they say that it comes from your maternal grandfather. That's probably what your hair is going to look like when you get older. And it freaked me out.


Kevin Rolston [00:01:34]:
It really did, because I didn't want to look like that. To me, that was the embodiment of old. I loved my hair. I always thought hair was absolutely gorgeous. So I had that dread at an early age, probably around the age of eight. So I continue on. I progress through high school and I get into college. Everything is still fine.


Kevin Rolston [00:01:54]:
Hair is okay, even though it is very fine and thin. I didn't have any hair loss that I noticed. Then it was finally at the age of 26. I was doing an event where I was breaking a board for a taekwondo class, and I had to bend over to strike the board to break it. And as I did, somebody snapped a photo of me and they said, hey, look at this photo. That was so cool that you did that. And the only thing I noticed was not me breaking the board, it was the fact that I had a noticeable bald spot right at the crown of my head. And it freaked me out.


Kevin Rolston [00:02:30]:
And I said, here it begins. And I knew that that photo that I had seen when I was eight years old was now starting to begin. But the question is, how fast would the journey be? Because the portrait of my grandfather was him in his seventies. So was I going to be able to hold onto my hair until my seventies, or was it something that was going to rapidly start falling out? I didn't want to wait and find out, so I went out and I found somebody that could give me advice on what to do, because there are so many things that happen and, yeah, you can start with your rogains. In fact, that was the first thing I did. I went out and I got some of the stuff that you can get at your regular pharmacy now. I started applying it and using it. I was impatient and I was concerned, but I stuck with it.


Kevin Rolston [00:03:15]:
I would say a good six months I was there, and I kept doing it, kept using it, but I kept noticing hair coming out my hands as I would wash it. I noticed in the drain that there was more and more hair, and I just felt like I was still losing more than I was keeping. And so I thought that I needed to go to the next level. And there are so many levels, and that next level was talking to somebody that gave me some guidance. And I was very happy that they plugged me into something called finasteride. It was a pill that I would take that would basically blocked the DHT, the testosterone created by my body that would start closing up my hair follicles and making my hair fall out. And for me, it was really great. It really did slow down my hair loss.


Kevin Rolston [00:04:00]:
And from the age of 26 into my thirties, probably a good ten years, it was all I needed. But look, im a person thats always been on that quest to have a perfect head of hair, and im very particular about it. And any kind of hair loss or just something looking like Im losing it at all still bother me. And there were still some of those issues. So I continued my journey and I tried about everything because I wanted to see, hey, what was going to work best for me. And that's the one thing I found. That's why to me, every person's hair loss journey is different, because I think things work differently for people. And not to mention, too, I was at a different budget at the age of 26 than when I was 36, so I had more options and there was more that I could do, and that's part of the conversation as well.


Kevin Rolston [00:04:48]:
So throughout my journey, there are other things that I went to. Lasers. That was something that's pretty interesting. I started off by doing a salon laser where I would have to sit in the chair, and for 30 minutes a week I would have this blinky little light on top of my head. And so many people have talked about great experiences that they've had with that, and the technology for it's really improved. And so many people just absolutely love you using the laser caps, and that's all that they've needed. And the laser caps now can be done portably. You could have a laser cap, which I did.


Kevin Rolston [00:05:25]:
After I went through the salon visits, I got my own, and it was something that I would wear, and I wanted to up my frequency, too. I found that just one time a week wasn't enough. I wanted more. Cause, hey, if it worked great, one time a week, I heard that using it several times a week was even better. So I'm doing it three to four, maybe even five times a week, at least a minimum of three. And when you have your own laser cap, that's something you can do, and you can walk around. It can be portable. If you're on a road trip, you can actually put it on your head and drive around.


Kevin Rolston [00:05:54]:
And who cares what anybody else in traffic thinks about you? They don't even really notice. It was really amazing because it really looked like a ball cap factors, a ball cap that went over top of it, so it was pretty discreet. And the laser caps work really well. So that might be an option that you want to do. There are so many other options that I didn't even try outside of the ointments and the topicals that you could do. Even now, there's people that are doing the tattooing, and there's just interesting little extra ants and stuff like that that you can use that I haven't really gotten into. And, look, if you seek something like that out, there's just so many options. I even went the route of the hair transplant, and that was my next step, because I wanted to fill in a few spaces, and I knew it was going to be more of a permanent solution.


Kevin Rolston [00:06:38]:
And my experience was, honestly, really good. With the hair transplant, it wasn't anything that was painful. They numb up your head. I was doing something where we had a show. We were walking people through the procedure, so mine took a little bit longer. I was down for about 10 hours. But a couple things that I would tell you about the hair transplant is you might want to look into the payment plans that they do, because I had one of those, and it became something that worked into my budget when I did that. The other thing you might want to find out, too, is how many strands you're putting in, how they're putting them in.


Kevin Rolston [00:07:11]:
I had a really good transplant doctor that could make it look really natural, and that's, of course, what you're definitely going to want, and I think a lot of the transplant specialists out there today are going to be somebody that is going to do basically what I had with numbing of the scalp. I didn't feel anything at all. That wasn't any kind of issue, and I wasn't really out. You had to, you know, cover your head, hair up for, you know, a couple of weeks because there's going to be some fallout, some shedding, and it's going to take a little bit of time. That's one thing to know, to really fully see that hair and that area come to fruition and be strong. Like, it's going to be six months to probably a year is about what it's going to take. But, boy, when it's in there, it's permanent, and it's pretty awesome. And you might also want to try to get an idea of just how much more hair you're going to lose because you get a hair transplant.


Kevin Rolston [00:08:01]:
It's possible you might need another hair transplant down the road, or you might need more than one to fill whatever space that you have. You know, those, to me, are good questions you need to ask when you go in if you are going to consider doing a hair transplant. And I love mine, and it maintained for probably another five to maybe even ten years, I would say I wound up doing that. But as I continued to look, yeah, I continued to lose. I was heading down the path of where my grandfather was, and that's where I was going to go. And what I started noticing was some of the commercials that I would see on tv of people that were showing a little bit before and after and their stuff on social media. And it was pretty amazing because people who had the kind of hairline that my grandfather had and what I felt like I was heading to even a doctor Phil type of hairline, they were finding hair solutions with natural hair. I said, you know what? I think that's where I want to go.


Kevin Rolston [00:08:57]:
And again, it was something that I could do, and I started looking into the budgeting of it. I said, okay, this, to me, is my best fit. And going with that option really was fantastic. That was my hair solution, to have that and look maintaining with the finasteride, I found a great deal because I got the generic where it was only a dollar a day for the pill, and that was something that I could work in. And that really does slow down the hair loss. And so you might want to have a combination of things that you want to do. So that's why I completely recommend finding a specialist and somebody that walks you through all this. But as far as what I am doing right now with my hair, it is natural hair.


Kevin Rolston [00:09:43]:
It looks absolutely amazing. It blends in. I have a hairstylist that cuts it any way that I want. I go in every three weeks and it looks completely natural. You would have no idea that I have a hair system on at all. And that's, to me, why I love it. You can change up your hairstyle the way you look. They can gradually make it look like you haven't just all of a sudden gone from completely bald to having a full head of hair.


Kevin Rolston [00:10:11]:
They have strategies. They can start small. They can continue to improve it. You can do things like grow facial hair, take facial hair off, start wearing glasses, take glasses off so that people don't really understand the big change that you made. If being discreet is what you want to do. For me, I just wanted to have that kind of hair, and I wanted it today, and I wasn't shy about it. I'm a very open individual, and so I was cool with telling people what I did because I want people to know. And that's why I host the hairpod, because I want people to know what great solutions are out there.


Kevin Rolston [00:10:42]:
Because if you can get that confidence on day one, go for it. And for me, the biggest thing about having my hair system is how much younger it makes me look. I'm 50 years old now, and I'm not trying to toot my own horn. Most people say I look about 35. It really does. You take off my hair system and I look my age, it takes ten to 15 years off of your appearance, I believe, at least for me. And that's why having a hair system is where I wanted to go. But doing this hair pod is all about these different solutions that are out there so that you hopefully find the one that is right for you.


Kevin Rolston [00:11:18]:
And that's why I recommend getting a hair expert in your corner. Finding out, is finasteride right for you? Is it a minoxidil type of solution that's going to be right for you? Is it a laser cap? It is a hair transplant. Is it one of the other many solutions that are out there? Having somebody that's in your corner and continuing to come to the HairPod to hear these great discussions is going to help you find your solution for the budget that's right for you, and make sure you get a hold of us, too, because if you have any kind of questions, we would love to address them and correspond with you and maybe even do an episode that you suggest. So check us out on Instagram @HairClub or go to Facebook. We're there as well. I hope you find some great information in this episode and hopefully my hair journey is going to help you on yours.